zlacker

>What emerged was higher levels of a protein called NUPR1 in the older mice. This caused cells to act as if they were deficient in iron, which in turn limited their regeneration rates – putting restrictions on both healthy growth and cancerous tumors. ... "Aging cells lose their capacity for renewal and therefore for the runaway growth that happens in cancer."

Translating that to normalspeak: Lower metabolism leads to lower incidence of cancer.

It sounds like common sense to me; cancers form from damage and mutations to DNA during cell replication (kind of like uncaught bitflips during file copy operations), so the less replication there is (lower metabolism) the lower the risk of cancer and vice versa.

Also for some sort of related anecdata: My mother passed from stomach cancer, she had a lifelong chronic iron deficiency due to underperformant hemoglobins which she compensated for by taking iron supplements. Towards the end she ended up getting some iron infusions because her blood iron levels were so abysmally low.